The women's rights movement faced lot of issues on the way, as it was not given much attention during the civil war. It also competed with the black suffrage movement for attention. Still, it would be seven more decades before the dream of bestowing voting rights to women would actually materialize.



Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. The work for women suffrage was done from state by state. The organization also extended helped to the Black Suffrage Association. After 1868, Frances Willard's Women's Christian Temperance Union grew at a rapid pace and so did many other groups. Women started to join these groups in large numbers. Then women started applying the skills they learned in these groups into the suffrage movement. Mathilda Jocelyn Gage published the first three volumes of suffrage movement history in 1887. In 1890, the merger of the two rival groups, the NWSA and AWSA, founded the National American Women Suffrage Association. The group elected Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt as their leaders. The founders of the suffrage movement died after almost fifty years of activity: Lucretia Mott (1880), Lucy Stone (1893) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in1902.

The suffrage movement of women also suffered because they continued to provide leadership to other causes like he national consumer's league, women's trade union league and other reform movements like health, child labor, and prison reform. However, these diversions also helped them in a way because it helped them gain political attention. In 1913, militant members who wanted a more radical approach were expelled by the NAWSA. They then formed their own group, the National Women's Party, under Alice Paul.

The attention to the women's suffrage movement was brought to national attention by large marches. In 1916, in order to get a constitutional amendment on women suffrage, the NAWSA decided to shift their approach and integrated their chapter. The press coverage increased when the members of NAWSA began to collect signatures across the country. Mabel Vernon and Sarah Bard Field organized the drive. They collected almost half a million signature through this process.

In 1917, Jeannette Rankin was elected as the first congressional representative three years after they established the women suffrage in Montana. After nearly 70 years of struggle, congress finally passed the law on women's suffrage as the 19th amendment in1919. In 1920, congress sent it to the each state to begin its adoption into state law. The women who fought for the right to vote may have become old, but they paved the way for the modern women to become truly independent and free.